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No doubt the usual people will soon have a post telling us how the late George Sodini is yet further proof that inside every beta is a murderer struggling to get out. Ironically, Roissy and Half Sigma implicitly endorse this view by blaming the women in his life for having driven him to violent despair.
Maybe. But that analysis kind of requires us to believe that murder-suicide is a reasonable response to rejection and loneliness. I rather think that some third cause - insanity - was behind both the loneliness and the violence. Judging by the picture Half Sigma posted, Sodini doesn't appear to have any physical reasons to repulse women. I'm guessing that whatever dark demon drove him to walk into an aerobics class and start shooting women was the same demon that frightened away potential dates.
On the other hand, I would also have expected that demon to handicap his career, which it evidently didn't. In general, his case does make me question our ability to judge sanity by obvious functionality.
UPDATE: Half Sigma has done yeoman's work pulling together Sodini's internet footprint. In Mala Fide has an excellent series of posts with his own and others' thoughts.
Having looked through most of this, I have to admit that I see scant evidence of homicidal maladjustment. Only loneliness, desperate hope, and, finally, despair.
4 comments:
whatever dark demon drove him to walk into an aerobics class and start shooting women was the same demon that frightened away potential dates
People with dark demons like that never have any trouble getting dates. Ted Bundy and Scott Peterson both had women lining up. Women dig brutal murderers.
Dangit. Now thanks to you I spent the whole evening reading econoholic and the various items she's linked to. Interesting, though I can't quite figure out what her point is in attacking the alpha/beta theory, or what she is trying to suggest in its place. But on other subjects, she's got a lot of good real-world insights.
My impression is that her attitude towards "betas" is inextricable from her experiences as a bright, pretty girl trapped for years in a lower-class environment. But I can sympathize with that, and even with her vicious social climbing, without approving of what that experience made her: a woman with incandescent hatred for . . . well, almost everybody.
Sheila is trying to push back against the notion that the men who mistreat women are "alpha" types with dominant personalities and a lot of romantic options and that women could avoid being mistreated by coupling with beta types, who have fewer romantic options and more passive personalities.
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